


Gunshowers | Cowboy Bebop: How it Should Have Ended

by HopefulRomanticWriter



Category: Cowboy Bebop
Genre: F/M, Faye x Spike, Friendship, Last Episiode, My First AO3 Post, alt ending, alternative ending, how it should have ended
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-24 16:58:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14958510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopefulRomanticWriter/pseuds/HopefulRomanticWriter
Summary: *Spoilers: This is my alt ending to the last episode.*Spike leaves, but Faye decides she's not going to let him go off to his death alone.





	Gunshowers | Cowboy Bebop: How it Should Have Ended

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there lovely internet!
> 
> I just watched Cowboy Bebop for the first time and wasn't satisfied with the ending--so I wrote my own version. :P
> 
> This takes place in the anime starting during the last episode(s). Spoilers.
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
>  
> 
> \- - - 
> 
> What I listened to while I wrote this:  
> [Playlist on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/user/cyansunlight/playlist/2VXExNpiw2fOAbKHNJicfe)

Sometimes you chase a thing so long, when it's gone you don't know what to do with yourself. That's how it was with Julia.

That's why he had to go back. He sat with Jet one last time, eating the damn bell peppers and no beef. Ed and the dog were gone now, and the place was too quiet. If Faye was there, she wasn't showing it. It wasn't like her to go unseen--only missing.

So maybe Spike should have expected it, that she stood on other side of the wall, holding her breath when she heard voices. Spike! Spike was back.

And she should have expected it when he didn't stay. He didn't even stop to say goodbye. Not until she found him on the way to the docking bay, ready to throw his life away.

"I'm not going there to die," he'd said, "I'm going there to find out if I'm really alive."

Bullshit.

She aimed her gun and fired after--missing him. When he was gone, she slumped down against the wall.

"So that's how it is," Faye said to the empty hall, "You're just gonna go it alone, as if we never meant a thing to you."

And maybe that is how it would have gone down, except--

No. She wasn't going to let him. Hauling herself to her feet, she turned, punched the wall, and stormed off after him.

The Swordfish was already gone when she got to the bay.

Somewhere down below, Ed and Ein stopped where they'd been walking across the cracked earth and looked up, her father's location no more than a little blip on her radar. 

Ein barked, watching a bright speck streak across the sky just above the horizon.

"Shooting star, shooting star!"

Patting the dog, Ed turned and started walking again.

*  
*  
*

It was quiet there, far from the gunfire that rung out when Spike rolled from his craft, aim locked on Vicious. It was because of him that Julia was dead. Because of Vicious that Spike's quest was over, his reason for living gone. Or maybe he'd never been alive after all.

But then, how could a dead man shoot so well? Grabbing the gun of a fallen henchman, he circled, bullets spraying as one by one, all others fell. Then it was only him and Vicious. And when the bullet hit, it hit Spike in the arm. When Spike's hit, it took Vicious's gun.

They stood off, facing each other. Somewhere over and behind the scene, there was a rushing roar. Or was that the mind playing tricks? They were alone. Vicious retrieving a sword from his belt and Spike steadying his shaking gun, one arm bleeding at his side.

This was it, he thought, the moment it would all make sense. He'd been waiting for this. The moment he set himself free.

And Julia. Or does death set everyone free? But he didn't have time to keep thinking these things, because at that moment, Vicious struck. And Spike pulled the trigger.

An honorable death to be cut down by the enemy's sword.

But that fate wasn't for him. At that moment, a streak of yellow and someone was in front of him, pushing him to the side. 

Someone was there who had watched Jet clean the ship, alone. Someone who had watched Ein and Ed leave. Someone who had left a hundred times herself and once said it was better to have real solitude all by yourself than feel alone in a group.

"There's no such thing as an honorable death," Spike said, but it was more to himself than to Faye, who lay as still as Vicious on the ground, blood soaking beneath her.

"You idiot," she said, eyes closing. "I was never going to let you go alone."

It was quiet then, the echoes of the fight long gone as Faye's breaths grew still. Spike lifted her head in his hands, feeling all to familiar. This wasn't supposed to happen again.

Except that Faye wasn't Julia. She wasn't Julia by a mile, and she pulled one arm from her stomach and forced herself up. There was fire in her eyes when she turned to Spike, spitting blood as she said, "You wanted to know if you're still alive? Then go out and live."

Below, the henchmen had begun to gather. They looked up at Spike and raised their guns.

He turned to shoot, then grabbed Faye with his good arm instead, running as bullets rang out around them. But the two of them in the Swordfish was too much weight, and it pulled hard to the side as they took off. It would have been hard to fly with both hands and unhurt. This was suicide.

Or it might have been, if they hadn't landed, belly-down onto the deserted street. Sitting ducks, but alive.

For the moment, anyway.

A strange little car was racing towards them in a cloud of dust. A four-wheeler by the looks of it, some sort of exploration craft used to scale large boulders. The kind of thing a map-maker might have used, and Spike got the distinct feeling that he'd seen something like it before. He just couldn't place where. And with Faye fading beside him and his own arm all but numb, it was hard to keep focused on the present, let alone get his memories straight.

Spots had started to appear around the edges of his vision and he kept having to blink them away. That's right. He was seeing things, had to be, because the little dog that bounded out of the wheeler looked a helluva lot like a certain data dog.

And the red-haired kid that followed--

Faye was still out, stirring only to hack blood onto the backseat of the jeep as the four of them sped off out of town.

*  
*  
*

When she finally woke, it was in some sort of white room. The feeling of dejavu this gave her was not exactly pleasant, and she jolted up in bed, yanking the monitors from her arms as she tried to get a sense of her bearings.

Wait.

A shadowy figure leaned back against the wall where she couldn't see his face, smoking a cigarette.

For a moment, she wondered if this were still a dream.

"I changed my mind," she said to the shadow.

Just then, the door swung open and an orderly walked in.

"You can't smoke that in here!" the woman said with a pointed look at Spike. Then she turned to Faye and handed over the hospital bill.

Nope, definitely not a dream.

Spike and Faye looked at it, then at each other. As soon as the orderly turned away, they swung one after another out the window and climbed down the drainpipe, leaping the last few feet to freedom below as sirens sounded from above.

The Bebop was waiting when they got to the docks, and they barely got inside before Jet started takeoff. But no sooner were they up over the ocean than the ship gave a heavy lurch and Jet greeted them with a, "I wasted the last of our fuel saving your sorry behinds."

At least going down here would be better than in space. Here they'd have plenty of air to breathe.

*  
*  
*

Spike stood smoking out on the deck at dusk when Faye walked out silently behind him. They were dead in the water, very much alive. She kept walking until she stood at his back.

Pointing at the first stars, she raised her hand in the shape of a gun. "Bang."

Just as she lowered her arm, a shooting star fell into the distant ocean.

Spike said, still not looking, "So you gonna tell me what you changed your mind about?"

Faye smiled, turning at the same time he did, their faces inches apart. "It's like this," she said, "I used to think you could only get real solitude being by yourself." Then with her lips so close they could have touched his, she whispered, "Then I found someone I could be alone with."

Before Spike had a chance to process that, the door from the maintenance hatch clunked open and Jet appeared, covered in soot and carrying a dirty rag over his shoulder.

"Somebody care to tell me why the hall is riddled with bullet holes?" he said, stopping when he saw the way Spike and Faye were standing.

Ed took this as her chance to shove out in front of Jet, carrying Ein out onto the deck. The dog gave a little yap and circled Spike's legs before stopping to sit beside Faye, looking up.

Jet let out a heavy exhale. He climbed the rest of the way out of the hatch and the five of them stood there, watching the stars come to life until the sky and the ocean became one.

  


The End


End file.
